The Chinese tech giant behind TikTok says it's been working on its first smartphone

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• TikTok parent company Bytedance confirmed to Reuters Monday that it’s working on a smartphone.
• The smartphone has been in development for seven months and is being created in part with device maker Smartisan.
• News broke in May that Bytedance was looking to develop it own smartphone preloaded with the company’s apps, including TikTok and other platforms.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The Chinese company behind the hit social app TikTok has confirmed it’s been working on its own smartphone.

Bytedance is developing the phone is partnership with Chinese device marker Smartisan, Reuters reports. That confirms rumors reported in May that Bytedance was looking to create a smartphone to build out the company’s business beyond social platforms and apps. 

Plans for the phone indicate that it would come preloaded with Bytedance apps, including short-form video app TikTok and news aggregation app Jinri Toutiao. Through its app development, Bytedance has become to most valuable private startup in the world at $75 billion.

Read more: TikTok’s parent company wants to make a smartphone

The phone has been in development for the last seven months, Chinese financial news outlet Caijing reported.

Bytedance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming has been “dreaming” of creating a phone, and is leading the project, Reuters reports. As part of the Bytedance-Smartisan partnership, some Smartisan employees transferred to Bytedance to work on the phone.

Bytedance did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment on the reports.

It remains to be seen how successful Bytedance’s smartphone will be, since reports of similar projects from Facebook and Amazon have surfaced and since been abandoned. Additionally, Smartisan is a relatively niche smartphone maker in the Chinese market, so it’s possible the Bytedance phone would only go to market there.

SEE ALSO: Inside the rise of TikTok, the video-sharing app with 1 billion downloads that’s owned by a massive Chinese internet company

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